6 Ideas to Help You Move Forward on What Matters

May 3, 2012 By 12 Comments

Dream Catcher

Note from Art. Every once in awhile it’s nice to break from pure management and leadership writing and focus on our human condition. This is one of those posts…with some great help from a few friends.

Whether professional or personal, it seems that most of us carry around ideas and dreams that inspire us and give us hope for our future.

It’s fun to listen and watch as  people talk about their ideas. Their faces light up, their voices grow in enthusiasm, and for a moment in time, nothing else matters but the thought of the dream.

And then reality sets in, the glow fades, the energy level drops and the idea or dream is placed back in the closet and the door firmly shut, not to be opened until some undetermined time in the future.

Frequently Encountered Dreams Locked In Our Mental Closets and Cellars:

  • There are the unwritten books that many claim to have in them…waiting for the proverbial pen to paper or keys to keyboard.
  • There’s the career switch to a field that helps those we care dearly about or that leverages what we know in our heart of hearts is what we were meant to do.
  • I’ve lost count of the number of people who want to be in business on their own. Oddly, a fair number of those profess to wanting to own and operate Hot Dog stands. I suspect the simplicity of the business and the pleasurable (not necessarily healthful) thoughts that hot dogs evoke, are drivers on this latter one. The stand may just be a metaphor for something simple and fun.
  • It’s the degree…long postponed that is so critical to gaining admission to whatever professional game we are trying to enter.
  • It’s working on the skills…public speaking or writing, that are limiting factors in our progression.

Granted, some dreams…like certain wines have to age a bit before they can be opened and acted upon appropriately. There’s a time when conditions are just right. Mostly however, dreams…ideas we believe in or projects we want to pursue, must be seized, prosecuted and pursued with vigor…even if it’s at the pace of 15 minutes per day.

Dreams, like certain wines, go sour with too much time in the bottle.

I talk to people with big professional ideas…with dreams every single day. Most people have dreams they are interested in pursuing, but haven’t found the time to get going. Some are in pursuit, and while stressed and time challenged and slightly sleep deprived, they are happy and excited. Others are chronic achievers…they’ve cracked the code on getting going and on finishing (two very different challenges).

Instead of trotting out some motivational clichés, I polled those people who are in progress on achieving a major professional or life goal…and those who have cracked the code and have become serial achievers. Here are 6 ideas they served up to help all of us get it in gear and get going in pursuit of our dreams.

6 Ideas To Kick You in the Rear and Get You Moving:

1. Read the obituaries. I read the obituary page every morning and focus on the ages of those who have passed. I then wonder what there unrealized dreams were. Frankly, it scares the hell out of me…it scares me straight into action.

2. Kill the Cable. I cancelled the cable subscription. I was a chronic reality show watcher, and I realized that while I was watching these dumb but addicting shows, my own reality was slipping away.

3. Socialize Less to Manufacture Time. Like everyone else, there’s never enough time in my life. At first, all I could do was get up 15 minutes earlier every day, but eventually,  I worked on cutting out the useless stuff that sucked the time out of my days.  Now, don’t ask me to go to lunch…don’t ask me out for coffee, because I’ll say no. I don’t even feel guilty saying “no” anymore. I’m on a mission and that’s mission time.

4. Color Your World in Sticky Notes. I’m a Project Manager by background, so I use my own tools to plan my work. Simple and visual work for me. My office wall is covered in yellow sticky notes. When I achieve something, I draw a big red X through the item on the note, but leave it up. It reinforces progress or my need to make more progress.

5. It Starts with a Note or a Call. I’ve learned that there are always people on my path towards a goal…and instead of wondering what they think, I reach out and call them.  I’ve been thinking about getting my Ph.D. for the last decade, and I’m no closer today. I reached out to a Dean of a program I’m interested in and delicately broached the issue of my advancing age. He laughed and offered tongue in cheek that I was a little young (at 51) compared to the oldest in the program, but that my youth could be overlooked.

6. Hire Someone Who Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings or Excuses. Another offered: I hire a coach who doesn’t care about my excuses…but who delicately (like a sledge hammer on a railroad spike) reminds me of what it is I wanted to do and why I’m not getting there.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

A body at rest tends to stay at rest. Action begets action. Chances are, the idea has fermented in your mind long enough. Get it in gear and get moving before someone uses you as an example of how not to achieve.

If you’ve cracked the code on moving ideas and dreams into actions and achievements, consider sharing your ideas and helping move all of us along on our journeys.

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Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here.

Art Petty is a Chicago-based management consultant focusing on strategy and leadership development. Art regularly speaks on innovation in management and leadership, and his work is reflected in two books, including the recent, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. (download a free excerpt at Art’s facebook page.)

Art publishes regularly at The Management Excellence blog at http://artpetty.com/blog/

Prior to his solo career, Art spent 20+ years leading marketing sales and business units in systems and software organizations around the globe. You can follow Art on twitter: @artpetty and he can be reached via e-mail at art.petty@artpetty.com

 

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine: Listen with Intent

April 24, 2012 By 6 Comments

image of a coffee cupYesterday, a valued colleague described a fascinating professional interaction and used the phrase, “listening with intent.” While I imagine this is something on the level of “seek first to understand,” the phrasing works for me. It connotes a significant and deep personal investment in focusing on another human…something lacking from most of our interchanges in life and in the workplace.

A quick search on the topic uncovered a number of resources…mostly linking the phrase to the process of “active listening.” Listening with intent goes beyond the acts of repeating words and asking clarifying questions, techniques commonly associated with active listening.

Listening with intent isn’t a technique, it’s a personal value backed by behaviors that cause us to shift from the movie about ourselves running in our own minds to focusing on the movie or picture being created by another.

Stephen Covey describes this concept very eloquently and effectively in 7 Habits…and it is summarized wonderfully in this piece at Fast Company: “Using Empathic Listening to Collaborate.”

Instead of our usual listening “with intent to reply to control, to manipulate,” it (Empathic Listening) means getting “inside of another person’s frame of reference. You look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, you understand how they feel.” 

Rhetorical question: How many of us listen that hard to our colleagues? Our customers? Our loved ones? 

Frankly, the act of listening with intent…or employing Covey’s empathic listening, sounds exhausting and painstaking. I suspect that’s why we spend so much time not doing this.  Nonetheless, there are some good reasons to invest the mental sweat required to listen with intent.

  • Great negotiators understand and apply empathic listening masterfully. They strive to understand issues, goals and aspirations, which are often hiding out of sight behind positions.
  • The best salespeople I’ve been privileged to work with are masters. The worst sell on features and functions, the great ones sell by sitting down in our theaters and seeing the world and challenges and needs from our frame of reference.
  • Great strategists listen to customers and markets with intent. They look for emerging patterns and strive to make sense of those patterns and then they adapt their firms and products and services to fit the patterns and frames of groups of customers.
  • The best medical professionals employ Empathic Listening with their patients, which makes a remarkable difference in how we cope with difficult diagnoses.
  • And yes, the best leaders strive to tune-in to their employees, particularly as it relates to professional development.

Covey  ties this concept off beautifully with: “When you listen with empathy to another person, you give that person psychological air. And after that vital need is met, you can then focus on influencing or problem solving. This need for psychological air impacts communication in every area of life.”

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Help your family members, colleagues, employees, customers and even negotiating opponents breathe a little easier. Listen with intent. Listen with empathy (not sympathy) and provide a bit of psychological air. Most of us…myself included, don’t this very well or very often. It’s time to start.

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Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here.

Art Petty is a Chicago-based management consultant focusing on strategy and leadership development. Art regularly speaks on innovation in management and leadership, and his work is reflected in two books, including the recent, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. (download a free excerpt at Art’s facebook page.)

Art publishes regularly at The Management Excellence blog at http://artpetty.com/blog/

Prior to his solo career, Art spent 20+ years leading marketing sales and business units in systems and software organizations around the globe. You can follow Art on twitter: @artpetty and he can be reached via e-mail at art.petty@artpetty.com

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Professional Growth, Values Tagged With: , , ,

Bringing Back Professional Courtesy

April 19, 2012 By 8 Comments

Professional Courtesy Never Goes Out of Style

The issue of professional courtesy (or seeming lack thereof) came up at a recent networking group meeting. With permission, I’m sharing the spontaneous suggestion list we generated, including ideas for live and social media settings. You can easily intuit the pet peeves that led to the suggestions.

Please add to the list and let’s all strive to put these into practice in real-time. 

At Least 15 Ideas to Help Bring Professional Courtesy Back:

1. Don’t send a Linked-In invitation without personalizing the note. (OK, this one was mine. It’s the height of laziness to skip this common-sense and common-courtesy step.)

2. If someone facilitates an e-introduction, thank the person who introduced you and take the initiative to reach out to the person you’ve been introduced to. Don’t let these go stale.

3. Jamming business cards into people’s hands at networking events isn’t networking. Introduce yourself, ask about the other party and listen.

4. One conversation at a time in group settings. Always. Forever. Always.

5. Say “thank you” constantly and mean it.  Say it in person, via-email, in social media settings…everywhere.

6. We all know that “Thank You” in your e-mail signature is in your e-mail signature. There’s something less genuine about that. Type it out yourself so it doesn’t look like you put it in your e-mail signature because you’re too lazy to type it out!

7. Auto DM messages on Twitter are generally not appreciated and frankly, they feel disingenuous.

8. Executive Recruiters, we know you work for yourself first, the client second and the candidate not at all. However, you have a professional obligation to loop back with candidates. These are people’s lives and livelihoods you are dealing with here.

9. HR Managers and Hiring Executives, see the comment on Executive Recruiters and follow-up.

10. For all of us: quit “effing” around with the smartphone when you are SUPPOSED TO BE ENGAGING with (lisenting to, talking with) other humans.

11. Beware overuse of “I” in your conversations. Every “I” is amplified 10 decibels above your other words and after a few, we grow deaf to your message.

12. The 3rd stall on the right (or any stall) in any restroom is not the place to hold a phone conversation.

13. Listen better.

14. Smile more.

15. Walk into a room and portray a demeanor of “You’re here and I’m honored to see you,” instead of the royal, “I’m here and you should be honored to see me.” Trust me, we sense which one you are portraying.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Courtesy given freely and genuinely pays handsome dividends many times over. What a great investment! Let’s bring professional courtesy back.

And to those of you who stop by to read and to share your wisdom, Thank You. -Art

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Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here.

Art Petty is a Chicago-based management consultant focusing on strategy and leadership development. Art regularly speaks on innovation in management and leadership, and his work is reflected in two books, including the recent, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. (download a free excerpt at Art’s facebook page.)

Art publishes regularly at The Management Excellence blog at http://artpetty.com/blog/

Prior to his solo career, Art spent 20+ years leading marketing sales and business units in systems and software organizations around the globe. You can follow Art on twitter: @artpetty and he can be reached via e-mail at art.petty@artpetty.com

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Professional Growth, Values Tagged With: , ,

The Cruel, Bitter and Crushing Taste of Dump-Truck Feedback

April 17, 2012 By 7 Comments

Manure Delivery

Right after avoiding it, the most commonly employed managerial strategy for dealing with feedback is, delaying it. The first approach is poor form… the latter approach is cruel.

Have You Seen this Movie?

Place yourself in a setting where you are sitting down for your annual performance evaluation. In your mind, the year has been filled with smiles and pats on the back from the boss and co-workers. Your frame of reference is, All is Good,  and you are genuinely excited for the opportunity to talk to the boss about how you can contribute more.

This good feeling lasts for about 5 seconds into the conversation.

As quickly as the smile on the boss’s face fades, you’re being fed the first piece of the “But” sandwich, slathered in “To Be Honest With You” sauce. It sounds like this: “You’ve done great this year, But, to be completely honest with you, we have some concerns.”

The first bite tastes stale and rotten at the same time. And who the heck is “We” and why didn’t they tell you they had concerns? Never mind that the boss just confessed he was lying to you all along and is only now being truthful. (Note to everyone: use of the “to be honest with you phrase is a guaranteed credibility killer. Strike it from your vocabulary.)

As the reality sinks in that this conversation isn’t about what you’ve done right or what you can do to contribute more, you swear you can hear the beeping of the dump-truck as it backs up and prepares to unload a year’s worth of everything you did wrong, all at one time.

The above conversation takes place somewhere in a corporate office daily. I’ve heard this countless times, and most recently from a good friend.   Perhaps you’ve been on the receiving end of this stale, rotten sandwich and dump-truck criticism.  Feels good, doesn’t it?  Not.

While I would love to wave the proverbial magic wand and see all who abuse this most important of developmental tools, placed into feedback jail and rehabilitated, reality tells us that our primary focus must be on our own behaviors.

4 Steps You Can Take to Stomp Out Dump-Truck Feedback:

1. Frequently ask the boss for feedback. If “How am I doing” elicits a grunt and a snarl with no input, try variations, including, “What do you need me to do more of?” or, “What can I do to help improve performance?” or, “How can I better help you?”  Creating an opportunity for the conversation might just open a dialogue and keep the dump-truck in the parking lot.

2. Get this right when it’s your day. If you supervise or manage others, get this right from the start.

3. Teach good feedback practices. If you supervise or manage those who supervise or manage, teach the right behaviors and hold people accountable for getting this right with their people.

4. Give some feedback on the feedback. If you are victimized by  a “Dump Truck” approach while being force fed a “But” sandwich slathered in “to be honest with you” sauce, give some frank and professional feedback on the feedback process. And yes, I mean, good, behavioral and professional feedback…slightly different than the thoughts running through your mind. And then ask the questions in #1 above.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Everyone loses…the firm, the manager and the employee, when the manager delays giving feedback. Some managers may be beyond rehabilitation, but you control your own actions.Tips for strengthening your command of the feedback process are never more than a web search away. And, “to be honest with you,” (see, it doesn’t feel good, does it?), most professionals want and appreciate regular feedback…positive and constructive. As it becomes your turn to carry the management torch, make certain that the Feedback Dump Truck ends up on the scrap heap, along with the “But” sandwich and jar of “To Be Honest With ¥ou” sauce.

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Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here.

Art Petty is a Chicago-based management consultant focusing on strategy and leadership development. Art regularly speaks on innovation in management and leadership, and his work is reflected in two books, including the recent, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. (download a free excerpt at Art’s facebook page.)

Art publishes regularly at The Management Excellence blog at http://artpetty.com/blog/

Prior to his solo career, Art spent 20+ years leading marketing sales and business units in systems and software organizations around the globe. You can follow Art on twitter: @artpetty and he can be reached via e-mail at art.petty@artpetty.com

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Leadership, Professional Growth, Surviving Lousy Leaders Tagged With: , , ,

Friday Leadership and Management Sound-Bites

February 17, 2012 By 1 Comment

Though-provoking quotes from my current management and leadership reading stack:

On Greatness:

“Indeed, if there’s one overarching message arising from more than six thousand year of corporate history…it would be this: greatness is not primarily a matter of circumstance; greatness is first and foremost a matter of conscious choice and discipline.”

-Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen, writing in Great By Choice.

Here’s Hoping They are Wrong!

“Managerial contempt can improve performance even as it prompts aggression,” according to a study reported in the Research Watch section of the March, 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Understatement, Exclamation Point! 

“Leadership is enduring, dynamic and simple in theory but complex in execution.”

-John Hamm, writing in Unusually Excellent: The Necessary Nine Skills Required for Great Leadership.

On Bad Strategy and Leaders

“Bad strategy is not simply the absence of good strategy. It grows out of specific misconceptions and leadership dysfunctions.”

“To detect a bad strategy, look for one or more of its four major hallmarks: fluff, failure to face the challenge and mistaking goals for strategy.

-Richard Rumelt, writing in Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters.

On the Power of Passion and the Challenge to Change

“In business as in life, the difference between insipid and inspired is passion.”

“Problem is, deep change is almost always crisis-driven; it’s tardy, traumatic and expensive. In most organizations, there are too many things that perpetuate the past and too few that encourage proactive change.”

-Gary Hamel, writing in What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Leadership Tagged With: , ,
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